SpamAssassin: Fighting Spam

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SpamAssassin is a free utility offered to all InMotion Hosting customers to help combat spam. SpamAssassin works by blocking unwanted email addresses before it reaches your email's inbox. By default, SpamAssassin is disabled so you must enable it within cPanel to take advantage of it's features.

How does SpamAssassin Work?

SpamAssassin is not an email filter, as some other tools to prevent spam are but determines the email is spam as soon as it hits the server. SpamAssassin works on the back end of your email server and has 10 different levels of settings to catch spam. When enabled by default, you will be set to 5. This is mid-range. SpamAssassin uses a points based system called"hits" to label spam. When it finds particular characteristics in an email it assigns a point value. If the email exceeds the maximum point value it is determined it is spam. We suggest testing the different settings prior to using a higher setting.

Enabling SpamAssassin

The first step to enabling SpamAssassin is to log into cPanel. Once logged into cPanel, look for the icon under the mail section called "SpamAssassin"

Since SpamAssassin is disabled by default you will need to enable it. To do so, click on the "Enable Spam Assassin"

Now that you have enabled SpamAssassin, you will see a confirmation page. Congratulations! You are finshed! Click go back if you wish to modify the settings for SpamAssassin.

Using Filters to Organize Spam

In order to maximize the true power of SpamAssassin, we recommend you set up a Filter/Message rule in your mail client. Emails that are determined to be spam are still delivered to your inbox. Spam will begin with the subject line "***SPAM***". By setting up filters in your email client you can sort the mail and have all messages labeled as spam placed into it's folder for review later.  This will keep junk mail out of your inbox. To learn how to set up filters in various email clients, please visit our guide on setting up email filters.

Please check the next article on Setting domain MX records to remote settings in cPanel. If you missed our previous article, please see the Import Email Accounts/Forwarders in cPanel tutorial. For more information on this course please visit Using Email.